Le Franco Phoney

Now that the sun has finally arrived after months of rain and even some snow on the peaks of La Clusaz last week, Annecy is getting excited about the Winter Olympics. Annecy is one of the three final candidates for the 2018 Winter Olympics, so to celebrate officially, Annecy laid out some winter sports for people to try — sans snow.

Pictured is the massive ramp for skiers to slide down and try flips, twists and backward landings. No worries if you can’t ski: there were some giant inflatable rings for zooming down the ramp on instead. Kids and adults were all keen to try the ramp, with ski boots and skis available for use. There was one guy who, according to his mates, was going to try a double back-flip, except he leant back too far at the moment of take-off and bumped the back of his helmet-clad head onto the ramp before falling in a heap on the inflatable cushion. I think the impact knocked his helmet off completely, as it was nowhere to be seen. Paramedics put him in a neck brace and carted him off. Regardless, the queue of people to try the ramp grew while they waited for the paramedics to clear the area. I think it would have put me off, but I’m not very Savoyarde I guess.

Other highlights of the day included various French celebrities dotted around being interviewed by news reporters, a hot air balloon with the Annecy 2018 logo on it wafting past, a stage with lots of entertainment, a whole swag of local food to try, and of course, some other winter sports.

Apart from the ski ramp, there was a cross-country ski track — made of plastic so that the hot summer day didn’t melt any snow. I can think of nothing more boring than forcing my feet into ski boots on a warm day, then attaching skis, then putting those skis into blue plastic tracks like reverse railway tracks, and moving my feet along. However, the kids seemed to love it, so again, it’s probably because I’m not very Savoyarde.

The luge looked like fun. Yes, there was a luge! It too functioned without actual real snow. It used wheels on rails set in concrete to keep the luge on the short flat track. The kids loved it too. To top it all off, BMX courses were set up for different levels of ability, which, of course, the kids also loved. I have no idea what BMX biking has to do with the Olympics but nobody there was complaining.

Wandering through Le Grand Bornand the other day, I came across this art installation (click on the image for a bigger version) by Miguel Chevalier. The image shows just half the room of digital snowflakes, projected on three walls of a darkened room, and apparently interactive. Interactive? Yes, well, apparently. The information plaque says that the more movement and people there are in the room, the more active and numerous the snowflakes. A friend and I tested the activity scale by running in circles and waving our arms around in a darkened room (much to the surprise of others in the room). We had some success in making a snowflake twirl in reverse and much faster than previously, but that’s all we could muster.

We sat for some time prior to that, watching all sorts of snowflakes form, drift, enlarge, blur and disappear. This is enjoyable art!

Little did I know, it’s actually just one of many other art installations around the Aravis region that I’ve noticed but haven’t paid much attention to — and they’re here until August. I hadn’t realised that the ice rink in La Clusaz, which now has various colours painted under the ice, is one of those installations. Nor did I realise, way back at Christmas time when I drove along the valley opposite Dingy St Clair, that the giant red bulbs hanging hundreds of metres down an invisible-at-night rock face were more than just a Christmas decoration. They looked like lights dangling from the ski they were so high up, and so seemingly unattached to anything but the darkness. I haven’t seen it up there since and I presumed the police had arranged its removal because it was dangerous for drivers, who might divert their attention from the road to the strange red lights dangling from the heavens!

So, here in St Jean de Sixt, what do we have? Artisinal artwork, according to the Aravis art installation website. I’ve yet to see any of it, but apparently, the local baker has made a tree out of baked pastry goods.

Someone very close to my heart participated in last weekend’s Defi Foly and he did his runs with his waterproof camera stuck to various places. The video from his snowboard is rather bumpy! This one, however, taken from a stick in his hand, proved quite stable, but unfortunately made it harder for him to balance once he was in the water (I think he was more concerned with keeping the camera balanced than himself!). So, if you want to experience the speed of the snow ramp at around 65km/h, click on the video below.

He left from the first height out of three. Imagine how much faster the speeds are from the top height without any turns. I guess the force of hitting the water from just the first ramp is enough for most contestants.

The weather in the French Alps is changeable at the best of times, so organising a BBQ while the ski lifts are still running is probably a bad idea. However, as you can see from the first photo below, the weather last weekend for the Defi Foly (I wrote more about it last year, here) was great! People were burning from the hot sun as they chowed down on some BBQed goodness, watching the stunt paragliders in the sky between the crazy people zooming across the lake on skis, snowboards, monoskis or snowscoots. See photo below for a sample of all that sunny goodness. The ramp in the background is in the sun and the snow was melting quickly. Our flagpole helped my friends find our group in amongst the crowds of people.

And then there’s that big cloud that dumps rain down amazingly quickly. This is what happened just after I had reapplied sunscreen to my burning shoulders. A friend who had an umbrella to protect her skin from the sun merely grinned as the rest of us ran for cover. The wind picked up and I feared the flagpole might fall, so with thongs/flip-flops/jandals/whatever-you-like-to-call-them on my feet, I slipped and slushed over the new mud to reach the pole. It’s actually just a fishing pole which slots into itself to reduce in size, and while I shrunk the pole, all my friends decided I made a good religious photo opportunity. Some have named me the flag-loving Romanian lady, and others are now calling me Mary. What you’re actually looking at here is a grass skirt, bikini, and flower lei hidden by a hoody and scarf to soak up the rain. Within five minutes of the rain starting, people had cleared off en masse. You can see just how empty it looks compared with the photo above. What strikes me most about this photo is my friend in the foreground who hasn’t noticed the rain at all due to his heightened interest in a box of cookies.

Meanwhile, the guy who won the Defi Foly, Philippe Troubat, broke all the previous records by reaching 155 metres — almost the width of the lake! That’s ten metres more than the previous best time of Freddy Quenet, who is normally the clear winner every year. Next year should be good. I might bring a rain coat.

Hooray! After months of no action on the St Jean de Sixt roundabout, we finally have some mannequin action! They used to change so regularly, but I think this is the first time this winter that they’ve come out. Where else in the world would you find a roundabout with French ski school instructor outfits on it? There’s even a white ski slope, skis, poles goggles and hats, and a judge mannequin in the background. Why the judge? Read on.

The judge is there because these mannequins represent the French ski school version of a nativity scene. Each year, around 3000 members of the French ski school compete against each other in all sorts of snow-based competitions, and this year Le Grand Bornand are holding it for the second time in the competition’s sixty-year history. It’s a bit of an honour for ski resort really, and that’s why the roundabout has been decorated for the event. The judge shown on the roundabout could be judging anything from a boarder cross competition, to downhill skiing. This covers all their disciplines, so telemarking, cross-country skiing, and even freestyle competitions are included. More info, in French, here.

Apart from the competitions, there is loads of entertainment, and I’m pleased to see that the Radio Meuh DJs will be pumping out some grooves between the other DJs, bands, booze and cheese tastings on offer for free. So, thank you, St Jean de Sixt roundabout, for alerting me to the festivities of next week, which may have otherwise passed me by.

I’ve been away in Méribel this week, which is why it’s taken me until now to do a blog entry. Méribel is far more bling than La Clusaz or Le Grand Bornand, and I was expecting to be totally out of my element despite spending many seasons there as a ski bum. Apart from a group of young chalet hosts who drove me away from where I was seated with their attempts to impress each other at how hungover they were, I was pleasantly surprised overall. First up, CoreUPT skis were everywhere! Candide Thovex apparently has more of an influence on the bling kids than I thought! Another surprise was seeing the artwork of Charlie Adam, who I wrote about just the other day, on the front of the Méribel piste map and on various bits of resort advertising. It seems that La Clusaz is having more of an influence on Méribel than Méribel is on La Clusaz! I’d never have thought that possible, and it makes me proud to live here. Here’s some Candide action, although I recommend you go directly to candidekamera.com and watch it in full screen mode to really get the most out of the vid. Enjoy.

Snow. White cold stuff, right? In French, it’s neige. Snowflakes are called flocons de neige (or just flocons). In the past week, I’ve seen snowflakes, rain and bright sunshine. The rain down lower was heavy, and the French saying for heavy rain is “Il pleut comme vache qui pisse” (It rains like a cow that pees).

The pistes have turned from poudre or peuf (powder) to soupe (erm, soup). There are also icy patches underneath like a patinoire (ice rink). Conditions have gone from hard-packed to soft and mushy, to avalanche-prone, then powdery, and now back to soggy snow, all in less than a week. And if you want to have a chat with any French person about the conditions, you really do have to know more than the word for snow. Otherwise it’s plain confusing: “What’s that? You were stuck in soup? You hit the ice rink? Then a cow peed?” These are just a few examples of snow-related talk that you probably need to know.

This photo of an avalanche (you can figure out its size by looking at the big pine trees) shows how a thin the layer of snow can transform quickly from a patinoire to soup, and then collapse under its own weight. Apart from the obvious faux-pas moment of misunderstanding someone who mentions getting stuck in soup, it’s pretty handy to know from a safety point of view, especially at this time of year. If someone is talking about a fondue, chances are they’re talking about melted snow and not cheese. Snow fondue is by far the less attractive type.

Last week, I discussed out-dated one-piece piste fashion. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that even those with the latest gear sometimes screw it up. The colours from the eighties are actually making a come-back, but there’s still a big difference between then and now. That difference is geometry. That’s right, back in the eighties, jackets were all about geometric shapes — a triangle on the centre of the jacket or a diamond on the back, with squares of different colours sewn together to make a patchwork jacket. In 2010, the fashion is more about either one solid colour making up a jacket, or a patterned fabric. For example:

On the left here is someone who has broken up the limeness of his pants with a darker jacket.  In the middle, proof that patterns can look good when coupled with a solid colour. The guy on the right has gone for mismatching colours, and thankfully, just one pattern. That’s all good. These sorts of combos are currently very popular.

Less popular, thankfully, is patterned tops and bottoms. This guy on the right, for example, is actually a really good skier (he’s easy to spot), but I can’t help thinking of pyjamas when I see his outfit. Talk about busy! I like the way he’s got his matching blue jumper tied around his waist, but I wish he’d stick it over his jacket instead. In the sparse five minutes I had yesterday to snap all these photos, I failed to see anyone wearing patterned ski pants with a different patterned jacket, but it’s the worst combo possible, usually involving lots of colours and totally clashing patterns. It’s a great sign that nobody was out and about in mismatching patterns, but it does sometimes happen, and to be frank, twenty-year-old one-pieces are kinder to the eyes.

Of course, all this is just my opinion, and this guy probably considers my chocolate brown jacket and bright blue pants totally boring and “so 2008″. (I feel like lending him my pants actually: they’d go nicely with his jacket and turn the volume down a bit.) Perhaps next year, I’ll be looking back at this blog entry and wondering how I could be so silly to think that anything less than matching jimjams on the piste is a good thing. But for now, I’m resisting. And I think I will next year too.

Following on from my last post about fashion, this one is about kids. I’m not a parent, but I was a kid on the piste, and I remember my parents wanted me to look cute, but more importantly, identifiable from a distance. It’s perhaps for this reason that very few kids are ever dressed in black. I had yellow plastic pants (it was before Gore-tex existed) and a red woolly hat with a massive pompom on top. It matched my red jacket. My mum could identify me as I cried the whole way down the nursery slope, and my dad could pick up my hat from the snow after each and every fall.

Imagine if there were half a dozen kids in yellow pants, a red jacket and a red hat. My dad would have been retrieving hats all over the place, and my mum would have probably been hassling another mum about hugging a kid she thought was me. Confusing! And that’s what it’s been like this year in the French Alps. It seems that loads of parents have opted for a kids’ one-piece in red, orange and white. Although I’ve seen the same outfit in the darker colour scheme of navy blue, I guess most parents have decided that they want to see where their kids are, and so, red is better. Below is a photo I took while eating a crepe the other day. There was actually another kid in the same outfit sitting in the creperie with me, but I couldn’t get him in shot. That’s four kids in the same outfit, and more kept rolling through as I later sipped on a hot chocolate.

So, what fashion advice am I offering? I’m not actually sure. I would say to parents to think twice before buying this particular outfit, but then, it’s not always a bad thing: last week in Avoriaz, I found a crying child wearing this same outfit. I asked him if he was lost in French, but he answered in another language. Luckily, one of my friends speaks Dutch and was able to find out that the kid had been separated from his mum and brother. He took him to the chairlift operator who put the word out. When a woman and another kid in the same outfit walked past a few minutes later, my friend recognised the outfit immediately and sure enough, that was the lost kid’s brother and mum. Family reunited thanks to the ski suit.

Compared with the average French woman, I’m a fashion disaster. I do not, at least, get out on the street in twenty-year-old clothes that are faded and out-dated. Nor do I get on the piste in ski gear from the eighties, but plenty of others do. I know, I know: ski clothing is expensive, and if you go once a year, you can’t justify buying new gear every year. But maybe even every ten years would do. I’ve snapped lots of bad outfits, but I’ve chosen these three as examples (unfortunately similar in colours, but different in other ways) of how not to style yourself on the piste.

One-Piece Number 1

This couple still use skis from the late eighties/early nineties. At least they match the outfits. The outfits don’t look like any others around them, but they haven’t seemed to notice. What really gives them away, apart from the colour distribution, is the big pocket in the front of her outfit and the giant triangle pointing down on his. Advances in both ski technology and waterproof material (Gore-tex, anyone?) mean that this couple are doing themselves a bit of a disservice: shaped skis that have been around since about 1999 really are much easier to use, and well-worn twenty-year-old fabric is never going to have the warmth or protection of today’s material. And if anyone wants to defend their choice of ski by saying it’s ‘real skiing’, then they should probably be on old wooden skis with telemark bindings. Ski technology moved on with fashion.

If you must wear a one-piece please pull the trouser legs down over your boots. This will keep your buckles and boots dry and protected, stopping the buckles from icing up on cold days (they’re difficult to adjust like that), and saving your feet from getting wet from that ice melting and seeping through the shell.

One-Piece Number 2

Here are more unprotected boots, but this time at least the one-piece wearer has tried to pull the trouser legs over the boots. Many older one-pieces (like this faded one) suffer from this problem and I really don’t know why. The leg tightness unfortunately extends to other parts of the outfit, and the owner, a lady would you believe (head cut off to be kind), has done that common eighties thing of attaching a bum bag to store whatever it is she needs to take with her for the day. Bum bags were indeed all the rage in the eighties! I had two: a pastel purple one, and one made of black leather. When they went out of fashion, I took them to the charity shop. What makes an every-day fashion accessory that lost popularity by the nineties timeless if worn with a ski outfit? NOTHING. I’d like to ask this woman if she wears it down the street, perhaps in summer when she has no pockets available (much like the result of this figure-hugging one-piece), and if not, why not. What’s the difference?

One-Piece Number 3

This one is actually a man (heads again cut off on purpose, and thanks to my friend Tom for the photo) who isn’t even on the piste. In fact, he’s in St Jean de Sixt, which really is a village down the road from Le Grand Bornand and La Clusaz ski resorts. So why is he wearing a rather scary one-piece? Maybe he went skiing earlier, but what I don’t understand is that if he’s bothered to leave the resort and change his shoes, why not change out of his one piece at the same time, especially when he’s considering eating in a restaurant. I’ve seen this often recently: people will be shopping in La Clusaz in their ski outfit and with a dog on a lead, but no sign of ski equipment. Maybe they’re worried they’ll fall?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been all these people: I still have my 193cm straight skis in my shed, and I owned an O’Neil one-piece back in the nineties because I’d heard that one-pieces keep you extra warm, and, given Australia’s often wet snow conditions, I saw the value in that. Mine was a fluorescent mix of colours. I wore it once. It was badly designed (it didn’t keep me warm because the zip down the front wasn’t protected, leaving me with a wet line down my front); going to the toilet was very awkward; I was mistaken as a man by my own boyfriend at the time, and when I looked around even back then, I noticed that nobody else was wearing anything remotely similar. I’m not saying I want to conform, but at the same time, I don’t get around in Elizabethan dresses or Cindy Lauper hairstyles.

So, my advice, if you believe an Australian for fashion advice, is to throw away the one-piece and either buy a new one-piece if you must, or better still, settle on a jacket and pants. And if you’re still using your old straight skis, I dare you to hire some shaped skis just for a day and not love them.

Still to come: kid fashion, over-blinging it, and possibly something about novelty hats.